TRAVELING THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BYWAYS
MILLIONS OF AMERICANS WERE FIRST introduced to Bernie Sanders and his political revolution in 2015. My introduction came thirty years earlier. In the spring of 1986, I had been suspended from Boston University for being arrested at an anti-apartheid protest on campus. It had been a tumultuous year. Before my suspension from BU, the administration had tried to throw me and three other students out of our dorms for putting political signs in our windows. The courts in Massachusetts had vindicated our First Amendment rights and stopped the evictions. That didn’t change the fact that I was returning home to St. Albans, Vermont, without a college degree, without a job, and with an arrest record.
When I got back home, I decided to reach out to the independent gubernatorial campaign of Burlington mayor Bernie Sanders. Bernie was running against Madeleine Kunin, the Democratic incumbent, and Peter Smith, the Republican challenger and Vermont’s lieutenant governor. Both Kunin and Smith had previously served in the state senate, and Kunin had also served as lieutenant governor. Both candidates were well known across the state and had won statewide office.
Within a few days, Phil Fiermonte, who was working on the campaign, visited me at my home, thirty miles north of Burlington. Phil had also been involved in the anti-apartheid movement. We would become coworkers and great friends—and remain so to this day. Before he left the house, I was the Franklin County coordinator of Sanders for Governor.
Knowing what I do now about campaigns and politics, it should have been a warning sign that a twenty-year-old with no campaign experience whatsoever was suddenly the county coordinator for a gubernatorial campaign. But at the time I was overjoyed. My newfound college activism was going to be put to work right at home in Vermont.
I got word a short time later that I was going to staff Bernie at the Enosburg, Vermont, Dairy Festival. Of course, I had no idea what that really meant, but it was my first opportunity to meet Mayor Sanders. My job was to hold the Bernie sign on a stick as we walked around. (For some reason, the campaign color was purple.) And I held the bag of Bernie buttons. Bernie would hand them out as he shook hands with the voters. He’d fill his jacket pockets with buttons to have them at the ready for the next handshake. The ritual was always the same. “Hi, I’m Mayor Bernie Sanders, running for governor.” Back then, there were a lot of people who did not know him or recognize him. If they seemed reasonably friendly, he’d move to the second part of the pitch: “Would you like a button?” He would always hold the button with the metal pin pinched between his fingers so the voter could see the face of it. Vermonters are polite. They usually took it. When he ran out, I’d scoop buttons out of the bag so he could refill his pockets.
I didn’t truly understand that the expression “death by a thousand cuts” could be more than a figure of speech until I spent a day repeatedly reaching into a bag of buttons, trying not to wince as I was pricked by every open metal pin. I had to reconcile the positive feeling of yet another Vermonter warmly accepting a button from Bernie with the knowledge that each one he handed out brought me closer to the moment I’d have to drive my hands back in that bag to get more.
Bernie always got great energy from positive interactions with voters, just as he would on a larger scale in 2015 and 2016 speaking to tens of thousands of rally attendees.
He must have been happy with my sign-wielding and button refills, because he called me the next week. “Jeff, this is Mayor Sanders. What would you think about coming down and working in Burlington a couple of days a week?” I said yes, and it was 24/7 until election day—and for much of the rest of my adult life.
It turned out that I was part of the second set of staffers brought on (there were two of us). I learned that he had once had a larger staff. But they had spent the small amount of money he had been able to raise and then suggested he withdraw from the race. Not Bernie’s style, then or now. His unwillingness to quit even when faced with insurmountable odds has been one of his great strengths in his lifelong fight for progressive change.
Bernie was, and remains, a tireless campaigner. I quickly became his full-time driver, sign holder, button refiller, parade companion, and all-around duties-as-assigned guy. Most days it was just the two of us traveling around Vermont by car from town to town, from public meeting to public meeting, from local newspaper to local newspaper. The campaign was supported by a kitchen cabinet of advisers, most of whom were part of Bernie’s mayoral administration. Jane Sanders was a key adviser even then and has remained so to this day.
Bernie’s crowds were nothing like those so many Americans have become accustomed to recently. We’d show up in a small town and there might be seven people. Twenty-five was considered excellent. Bernie would appear anywhere he could communicate with Vermonters. My father at the time owned a teen pageant in Vermont, and Bernie appeared as the guest speaker. Not a standard campaign stop, by any measure, but it was a good-sized crowd for a Bernie speech in those days.
I was introduced to Bernie’s complicated relationship with much of the media. He was and is very impatient with the media’s attraction to light news, conventional political thinking, and sensationalism. To him, the most important issues facing working people did not and do not get the consistent coverage that they warrant. The stories are too complex, the solutions too difficult to convey in a short newspaper story—and certainly too difficult for the time limitation of television news. It was impossible to convey bold new ideas when the media just wanted sound bites.
Back then there was no internet or social media, just television, radio, and newspapers. Bernie’s frustration was often evident. In his tenure as mayor, he took on almost every establishment institution in Burlington, which had earned him no friends at the Burlington Free Press or with much of the rest of the media. The exceptions were small-town papers and locally owned radio stations. While the editors or hosts may not have shared Bernie’s views, they were generally willing to give him the space or the time to present his positions in some detail.
Interestingly, he used to commiserate with Republican Richard Snelling, a former governor who was running against Senator Patrick Leahy in 1986, about their feelings about the media. Vermont is a small place, and during campaign season all the candidates for political office will typically attend any parades or community events. We often ran into the other candidates. When we invariably ran into Snelling after a parade, he and Bernie would compare notes. In the partisan era in which we live, unhappiness with media coverage may be the last area of bipartisan agreement among political figures.
Bernie’s message discipline became quickly evident. Just as in 2015–16, he had a 1986 stump speech, written on yellow legal paper, that he gave in town after town, meeting after meeting. Its centerpiece was income inequality and tax fairness—the “unfair and regressive property tax.” By the end of the campaign, I’d tease him by reciting the speech by heart as we drove down the road to the next stop. But that message discipline and consistent use of the stump speech, while unexciting to the media, was a great strength for him then, as it would prove to be in the recent presidential race. It allowed him to carry out an intensely crammed schedule of events. On very little sleep, he could reliably deliver the stump speech three or four times a day or more. When I asked about it one time, his response was that while the media may have heard it countless times, the people had not, because it was different from what they heard from every other political figure and in news reporting. It was true then and it’s still true.
The summer of 1986 turned into fall. Vermont’s hills and valleys turned from deep green to the multicolored spectacle that draws visitors from all over. As Bernie and I trekked across the state, we could feel the excitement for him growing. I felt he just might win. Of course, I had no frame of reference and was completely committed to the vision Bernie was conveying to people across the state.
Election day came, and that night we learned that Bernie had gotten 14 percent of the vote. How could this have happened? Looking back, I empathize with all the young people who gave their all for Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential campaign only to have us come up short of the nomination. I understand their disappointment so deeply.
The 1986 governor’s race laid the groundwork for his close run for Congress in 1988, which he lost, and eventually for his winning race for Congress in 1990. He had successfully presented his progressive message to Vermonters, and he (and the rest of us) gained a much greater appreciation for what it took to run a statewide campaign. He also had the chance to personally interact with thousands of Vermonters at town halls, parades, and county fairs. Vermonters expect their political leaders to engage in retail politics. Bernie has never lost a race in Vermont since his election to Congress in 1990. Without the losing race in 1986, he would not have become a viable candidate for president in 2016. Who can foresee what the ultimate outcome of the groundwork that Bernie and millions of Americans laid out in 2016 will be?
As a side note, the top vote-getter of the 1986 race was incumbent Democratic governor Madeleine Kunin, but she did not get 50 percent of the vote. That meant under Vermont law that the legislature got to pick the winner. The legislature picked Kunin, as they should have, given that she had the plurality. In 2016, she would be one of the few leaders of the anti-Bernie forces in Vermont.
* * *
In 1988, Bernie asked me to come back to work on his bid for Congress. It was an open seat, as the incumbent House member, Jim Jeffords, was running for the U.S. Senate. The Republican was again former Lt. Governor Peter Smith. The Democrat was Paul Poirier, the Vermont House majority leader. Having run in 1986, Bernie was much better known across the state, so he started much further ahead in terms of name recognition and experience.
I was brought on to play an enhanced version of the role I held in 1986. I traveled with him around the state, but I was much more a sounding board and a junior adviser than I had been just a couple of years before. Obviously, we personally were much more familiar with each another, having spent so much time together in 1986.
This was the year that the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes decided to do a feature on Bernie that would only run if Bernie won the election. A 60 Minutes crew followed us for a few days, and then Harry Reasoner came to Vermont to film his portion of the segment. The 60 Minutes crew followed us everywhere. As Bernie and I blew down the interstate in my red Yugo (okay, maybe “blowing down the interstate” is hyperbole), I remember the crew passing us on the right in their minivan. The sliding side door was open, and a cameraman was sitting in the doorway with his feet dangling out of the vehicle.
It was then that Bernie decided to highlight his dissatisfaction with the coverage or lack of coverage he was getting from the Vermont media, in this case the Associated Press. The AP had refused to cover one of his press conferences. My memory is that it was a press conference on the plight of Vermont’s family dairy farmers (an issue Bernie has dealt with throughout his legislative career, and on which I spent a large amount of my time on Capitol Hill). Bernie had the crew follow us to the AP office, which was upstairs in a building in Montpelier, Vermont’s capital. Maintaining a sense of fairness even when he was upset with someone, Bernie asked the 60 Minutes crew to wait five minutes before coming up. He and I trudged up the stairs to the AP office. Bernie asked if bureau chief Chris Graff was there. Chris came out and Bernie said to him that there was a 60 Minutes crew three minutes behind him.
What can only be described as controlled panic ensued. There was little doubt that everyone in that room wanted to slip under their desks or be teleported away to some safe place. As the 60 Minutes cameras rolled, Bernie confronted the AP about its failure to cover the press conference. It was fascinating to see people who always have the luxury of being on the asking end of a question-and-answer session having their actions scrutinized. Chris Graff handled himself well under the admittedly stressful and frankly impossible situation. But Bernie had effectively made the point that his fight for working Vermonters was going to necessarily include taking on establishment media who did not view the trials of ordinary people as important enough to cover.
The polls at the end of the race were not clear, because their results were within the margin of error. Bernie ran into his Republican opponent before the polls closed on election day. Smith embraced him and they wished each other good luck. It could have gone either way.
We watched the returns coming in. In the presidential contest, Bernie had supported the Reverend Jesse Jackson in the primary and endorsed Governor Dukakis in the general election. All night long, Governor Dukakis was ahead, and so was Bernie. Then, as some of the late returns came in, Vice President George H. W. Bush moved ahead in Vermont. The coverage turned to the congressional race. Bernie was now down and never regained the lead.
Bernie ended up losing the 1988 race by 3 percentage points to Republican Peter Smith.
The Democrat came in a distant third at 19 percent. In many ways, this night was even more disappointing than 1986. The issue of guns had played a pivotal role in that very tight race. Bernie had been the only candidate to come out in favor of an assault weapons ban. This put him at odds with his Democratic and Republican opponents, both of whom had come out against it. Theirs was the politically advantageous position in Vermont at the time. While a majority of Vermonters, like a majority of Americans, supported such a ban, all the intensity was on the side of the opposition to the ban. But that kind of calculation was not what was important to Bernie. He told people where he stood regardless of the consequences. It easily cost him 3 points in that race.
Bernie’s politically courageous position on gun safety legislation was one for which he would get almost no credit in his presidential bid as the Clinton campaign distorted his record and glossed over Hillary Clinton’s long history of being on every side of the issue. That included 2008, when she said she did not think one-size-fits-all federal gun laws made sense, and her campaign sent out mailers attacking then senator Obama’s stronger gun control positions. Her attacks were so over-the-top that Obama dubbed her Annie Oakley.
As late as the fall of 2015, in preparation for a Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence event in which Hillary Clinton was to receive an award, her staff was carefully modulating her position on gun safety legislation. She was deciding to not embrace the expansive legislation passed by New York State called the SAFE Act in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy. Clinton policy adviser Corey Ciorciari wrote, in a subsequently leaked email to other senior staff, “Don’t see a need to fully embrace the SAFE Act. There are some controversial items in there. We can highlight pieces that fit within our agenda.” Clinton research director Tony Carrk replied, “I agree. SAFE is not a safe bet.”
Even though Bernie lost in 1988, he set down an important political marker. He had shown that in Vermont he was the viable alternative to the Republicans, and that the third-place finishing Democrat had in fact been the spoiler. Throughout 1986 and 1988, Bernie had had to contend with a constant media narrative that he was going to be responsible for electing the Republican by taking away Democratic votes. Of course, no candidate or party owns anyone’s votes, but that was an issue he was forced to deal with repeatedly. That changed in 1988. Bernie was now more popular than the Democratic establishment in Vermont. And any Democrat running against him statewide was likely to come in third and tip the race for the Republicans.
* * *
One of the aspects of Bernie that too few people get to see is that he has a sense of humor. In most of his public appearances, he is so focused on the fight at hand that few are aware it’s there. After hundreds of hours on the road, I can tell you it is.
One day it was raining and we were unprepared. “Let’s stop and get raincoats,” Bernie suggested, pointing to a discount department store in a South Burlington shopping center. He frequently despaired over how difficult it is to find American-made and union-made clothing. On this occasion, he ended up buying us each a raincoat made in China. Over the next couple of weeks, they completely fell apart. First the seams started coming undone. Then the pockets were falling off. In the end, they were in tatters. Whenever one of us developed a new tear or unraveling seam, we broke out laughing.
During the 1988 race, Bernie and I developed a game that is still to this day a great source of amusement between the two of us—Honk-A-Mania. On breaks in the schedule, we would go to the nearest, most active intersection, because Bernie wanted to get in as much campaigning as possible. (That’s a trait that continued into the 2016 race. Reporters traveling with him early on found out the hard way that he doesn’t even have a scheduled lunch break.)
While we stood at the intersection, I would hold the Bernie sign, and Bernie would wave to cars passing by. Of course, we’d get some negative reactions. The finger. Mooning. Whenever that happened, I’d invariably suggest that we should put them down as “undecided.” It never failed to elicit a chuckle from Bernie.
To break up the tedium of waving at cars repeatedly, we started counting positive responses in a timed period and trying to beat our old “record.” As Bernie’s campaign caught fire in 1988 and then again in 1990, the number of positive responses increased exponentially. We started only counting “honks” in our tallies, as opposed to other signs of encouragement, like thumbs-ups or waves. It got to the point where we would get sustained flurries of honks that would go on for minutes at a time at busy intersections—like the five corners in Essex Junction. As the honking reached a crescendo, Bernie would wave more and more furiously to keep it coming and then would shout out in a dramatically extended fashion, “HONK-A-MANIA!”
* * *
The 1990 congressional race was a rematch of 1988, except that the Democrats did not put up a viable candidate. In fact, the Democrats didn’t push anyone at all to run, but a University of Vermont professor, Dolores Sandoval, decided to jump in. Vermont was becoming increasingly blue, which weighed in Bernie’s favor. But we were concerned that the nominal Democratic candidate would tip the reelection of then representative Peter Smith. The spoiler issue had come full circle. The Democratic candidate was now the “third party.”
Peter Smith was an old-style New England Republican. They really don’t exist anymore, even if Maine senator Susan Collins pretends to be one. Smith was pro-choice and pro-education. But he made two critical mistakes in his first term.
Shortly after his election, he double-crossed those opposed to an assault weapons ban by switching his position in a Washington, DC, press conference. That incensed people who had supported him in 1988, and some of them chose to support Bernie in 1990, even though Bernie held the same position on the assault weapons ban. But Bernie had been consistent and honest about his views. The sense on the street was that Smith had not. Homemade signs sprang up in many areas of rural Vermont: “Peter Pinocchio Smith.” Many people for whom this was a top issue believed that they could teach Smith a lesson by defeating him and then get rid of Bernie two years later. Underestimating Bernie is never a smart strategy.
The second error Smith made was supporting the first Bush administration’s budget bills, which slashed future increases in Medicare payments and made other cuts. Bernie went after him relentlessly on this front. For Bernie, this was the central issue of the campaign. Smith claimed to be a traditional New England Republican, but in Washington, on critical issues for working people, he was voting with the increasingly right-wing Republican establishment.
Bernie, the ever-tireless campaigner, traveled from one end of the state to the other, talking about Smith’s record of supporting the Bush administration’s cuts to social spending. As always, it was tough to get the media to focus on the complexities of this issue, but Bernie didn’t let up.
The race remained super-tight until Smith made his fatal mistake. He ran an ad attacking Bernie on his values. The offensive ad said that Bernie did not have Vermont values, and it showed pictures of Bernie and Fidel Castro moving together from opposite ends of the screen until they were side by side. Vermonters hate that kind of negative advertising. Smith’s campaign collapsed. Bernie won by 16 points.
The backlash against Smith’s negativity left a big impression on Bernie, and even more so on Jane. Jane in 2016 would be the most consistent voice on the campaign against negative paid advertising.
In the 2016 presidential race, the Clinton campaign claimed that Bernie’s victory in 1990 was due to the support of the gun rights community. The facts show that’s not true. There is no doubt that the anti-assault-weapons-ban voters were very upset with Smith. But the truth is that the entire change in Bernie’s vote from 1988 to 1990 (from 3 points down in 1988 to 16 points up in 1990) equalled the 19 percent total that Democratic Vermont representative Paul Poirier had received in 1988. Bernie won in 1990 because the Democratic vote moved entirely in his direction. Although on the ballot as an independent, Bernie was the candidate of the rank and file of the Democratic Party in Vermont.
The Democratic candidate Dolores Sandoval got 3 percent of the vote, so it may be fair to say that Bernie got 16 points from Democratic voters and 3 percent from people upset with Smith. But with a 16-point margin, that 3 percent was a fraction of the margin of victory. This type of empirical analysis fell flat with reporters in the 2016 campaign. Much spicier to buy into the false Clinton campaign narrative that Bernie was somehow an adherent of the NRA.